Tuvix

[Unicron]

Okay. As long was we're clear.

I don't think Janeway was right, I just don't think Tuvix was completely 'right' either.

Same here. Janeway's choice might be pragmatic in some respects, and I think there's pragmatic value to the viewpoints of all the characters involved. But I'm not fully convinced that it was the right choice, or that the alternative (letting Tuvix live, at the expense of his "parents") was fully right either. It's a difficult gray area for me, and it helps make the story dramatic.

You can't execute someone just because he's not as liked as someone else.

Again to use the transplant analogy: my brother-in-law is a pain in the ass. He's screwed over every member of the family at one time or another--sometimes very seriously.

Yet we still couldn't decide to make him donate a kidney to his brother, simply because we liked his brother better and wanted him to stay alive.

BTW, this is precisely why objectivity is crucial in medicine.

Okay. Suppose your brother was suffering because your brother-in-law had damaged his kidney, and was the reason WHY he needed a replacement to begin with. I still don't think having a forced donation is a good option, naturally, but how would that affect your approach to the situation? What if your brother was dying and your brother-in-law was the best available donor, as well as the cause of the problem? You have only a short time to make a choice, and it's the same difficult choice Janeway had. I don't know what to suggest, truthfully, and I don't think any of my choices are free of problems. I'd love for things to be simpler in this hypothetical scenario, but they aren't. No matter what I choose, somebody is going to suffer.

 

[USS Renegade]

Did your brother-in-law steal the life energies of two other members of the family without their consent and hoard them, stating that since it was within him he could do what he wanted?

Tuvix stole nothing. He was created in a transporter from the biological material of two humanoids & a plant.

And he did everything to make sure what was taken from them against their will was not returned to them, which is the same as theft. His life didn't really belong to him as much as a freak accident took it from others and gave it to him, and then he wanted to make sure that what was taken was not restored because he didn't care about either of them.

That is totally warped. Why should he be so obligated to protect two people he technically never met?

And he certainly did NOT do everything to make sure they were not returned. He probably possessed SOME of that enhanced Vulcan strength, and he had the full knowledge of the ship's tactical officer. He had a brilliant mind. He could have assaulted crew members, sabotaged the ship, tried to escape... No. He simply BEGGED for his life, he didn't fight for his life.

 

[USS Renegade]

So, why should this harm done to Tuvok and Neelix matter less and why should the crew accept that? That's what I've been trying to ask.

It isn't that the harm done to Tuvoc and Neelix should matter less. The reason the crew should have accepted it is that doing further harm to rectify it was wrong.

I think they should have accepted it because it could have been a much worse transporter accident. Remember the Vulcan science officer in TMP? What was the quote? "What we got back didn't live long. Fortunately." He was so screwed up his crewmates were glad he died swiftly. The crew of Voyager should have been GLAD they got as much of Tuvok and Neelix back as they did, really. It could have been MUCH worse.

Okay, that's fair enough. Let's spin it around: Tuvix wasn't killed by Janeway's choice, merely transformed back into two separate individuals who retained memories of their time as Tuvix. If his right to survive is to be based on part on his "parents" surviving in this changed form, why assume that Tuvix couldn't have survived in them the same way?

The problem with that is that it doesn't spin around like that. How could Tuvix have survived in them the same way? He was made of BOTH of them. Tuvix had the abilities of Neelix, Tuvok, AND his own unique abilities. After the split, Tuvok did not have Tuvix's abilities, nor did Neelix have Tuvix's abilities.

It's like taking apart a watch. A whole watch can be used to tell time. If you take out the gears and set them next to the shell, neither the shell nor the gears can give you the correct time. The gears are not the watch, and the shell is not the watch, only together are they the watch. So it is with Tuvix.

The *only* thing that we are guaranteed when we're born is that we'll die. And when people die, the survivors grieve. Preventing sorrow doesn't give you the right to kill.

Well Said.

"Here is my one big problem with this concept. Tuvoc and Neelix weren't exactly dead. Their knowledge still existed, their memory still existed, their skills still existed. They were not killed, but transformed."

Using that logic you can say that Tuvix wasn't truly dead either after he was split. So what's the problem?

See above.

Janeway made a choice as captain. She picked two lives over one. To me, it's really that simple.

But, it ISN'T that simple. It would be that simple if the scenario was "Two people are tied to a bomb in one building, one person is tied to a bomb in another building, you only have time to disconnect one bomb." THAT is picking two lives over one. THAT is pragmatic.

Killing one person, who was safe and innocent in order to bring back two others is not pragmatic, it is murder.

I can still see bringing back two lives at the cost of one as in some ways the more 'moral' choice. That may make me a bad person.

Well, I think that is evil for sure.

Here is a what-if for you. Seska kidnaps Kim and Torres. She says that all she wants is Chakotay dead for breaking her heart and she will release them, otherwise they die. Kes uses her amazing psychic powers to probe Seska's mind and discovers that she is telling the absolute truth. She WILL release Kim and Torres if Chuckles dies. The moral thing for Janeway to do is to pull out a phaser and kill Chakotay without ever even seeking an alternate option?

That is evil.

In one of the many debates on this episode over the years, someone said that *of course* he would kill to keep a loved one alive, and that *anyone* would. This sounds all romantic and everything, till you really think about it. Of course, none of us would. We might, in our darkest moments, *think* about it, but I don't think anyone would if they were truly faced with the option.

I disagree with all of that. I don't think anyone would kill to save a loved one, and I don't believe that no one would either.

 

[Michael]

And there's nothing wrong with any of us having different opinions, and no one should take it personally.

I'm glad you look at it that way. I hate to disagree with you, J.

But why not just have Tuvix sacrifice himself instead of making Janeway look like a villain?

If executed adequately, that could also have been a good dramatic alternative, yes. But as I said earlier, if I had written the episode, I would have advocated for an end in which the character who kills Tuvix gets punished. It doesn't necessarily have to be Janeway. Maybe Chakotey or another member of the Maquis. In my opinion that would have been much more consistent with them basically being criminals. The punishment should feel like a real sacrifice to the character and shouldn't be fixed by the next episode just to retain the status quo.

Fair enough. They did manage to keep us talking about it twelve years and eleven thread pages later.

Twelve.

I prefer my heroes flawed, myself.

Yeah, me too.

You can't execute someone just because he's not as liked as someone else.

I completely agree.

His life didn't really belong to him as much as a freak accident took it from others and gave it to him, ...

His life didn't belong to him? What does he have to do in order to make his life his own? And really, in a manner of speaking we're all just the result of an accident. Again, you make it sound like his life meant any less than the lives of others. I don't get how you can rationalize that.

... and then he wanted to make sure that what was taken was not restored because he didn't care about either of them.

Okay, using that logic, wouldn't that mean you had to kill yourself so that others can benefit from your organs etc.?

As for Janeway being "wrong" all the time, this goes back to what I said before: Ransom gets all the sympathy for doing evil things, yet Janeway gets all-around hatred for doing things nowhere NEAR as bad as his. Make up your minds guys, you can't like one guy for being REALLY bad and yet hate another for not being squeeky clean while still being good.

Hatred? You must have missed a few posts, because I think the general consesus is that people like Janeway because of her flaws.

Okay. Suppose your brother was suffering because your brother-in-law had damaged his kidney, and was the reason WHY he needed a replacement to begin with. I still don't think having a forced donation is a good option, naturally, but how would that affect your approach to the situation? What if your brother was dying and your brother-in-law was the best available donor, as well as the cause of the problem? You have only a short time to make a choice, and it's the same difficult choice Janeway had.

Morally, this still wouldn't make it right in any way. I can see how I might have different opinions on it if I were involved in this situation. But that's because I wouldn't (and couldn't) be objective. I'd be wrong. My desire to kill one person so that the other can live would be completely immoral and wrong.

 

[Michael]

He simply BEGGED for his life, he didn't fight for his life.

Exactly. And that is ultimately why I think the end of this episode was completely mishandled: We're encouraged to sympathize with Tuvix, who begs for his very life, just to be let down and killed by his supposed friends. The end feels completely wrong to me.

 

[Unicron]

The problem with that is that it doesn't spin around like that. How could Tuvix have survived in them the same way? He was made of BOTH of them. Tuvix had the abilities of Neelix, Tuvok, AND his own unique abilities. After the split, Tuvok did not have Tuvix's abilities, nor did Neelix have Tuvix's abilities.

Why not? There's certainly no doubt from most of us that Tuvix developed a distinctive personality during his life, and was a sentient being, but I'm not sure which "unique" abilities you're describing (though in all fairness, I haven't watched the ep in full in a long time and I know my memory's imperfect). The claim that neither of his progenitors would have retained these abilities is pure speculation, just as Tuvix's claims to speak for them are. That's not to say they're wrong, but to read any more into them is to lose the objectivity that we're supposed to have.

Killing one person, who was safe and innocent in order to bring back two others is not pragmatic, it is murder.

And those two people, who were equally safe and innocent before the event necessitating the choice, deserve to be murdered by this definition? This is why, while I agree about the potential immorality of Janeway's actions, I have a hard time seeing it as cold murder. Murder implies a malicious intent, not having to choose between two bad options. Tuvix wouldn't have survived for a few days, let alone a few weeks, if Janeway had the intentions that some have ascribed to her in the thread.

Morally, this still wouldn't make it right in any way. I can see how I might have different opinions on it if I were involved in this situation. But that's because I wouldn't (and couldn't) be objective. I'd be wrong. My desire to kill one person so that the other can live would be completely immoral and wrong.

If it were me, I wouldn't trust my objectivity either. Objectivity is a good thing, but it's clear from this sort of scenario that it can only go so far. Sometimes the lines of what seems ethical or moral blur, and there's no clear solution. That's why I try not to view them in pure absolute terms, because it's very difficult to find those standards. It reminds me of another ep where they were forced to deleted a part of the Doctor's memory, because he had to decide who to save (two crewmembers with exactly the same chance of survival), and he chose to save Kim. His ethical programming couldn't resolve whether he had done this out of friendship or not, as opposed to his medical programming.

 

[JustKate]

For some of us, and I am one of those, there is no clear right and wrong here.

That must be very frustrating for those of you for whom the issue is absolutely clear!

But please believe me when I say that my inability to wholeheartedly agree with you has nothing to do with the strength or weakness of your arguments - you've all been very patient and very articulate. I am confident that I can see exactly what you mean, those of you for whom the only moral choice is saving Tuvix, but I also understand exactly what those who think the most morally defensible choice is recovering Tuvok and Neelix mean as well.

I can see both sides. I can see both good and evil for both choices. For me, it is simply not clear cut, and as far as I can tell, it never will be. It is so unclear, in fact, that I rather admire the certainty of those for whom it is absolutely clear. But that is a certainty that I just cannot share.

Maybe one of these days, I will face a real-life choice that will clarify it for me, as it has for Teya. I hope not, but it could be. Of course, it could also be that the real-life choice, if it ever comes, will find me just as torn as I am now. I hope not, but it could be.

 

[Miss Chicken]

All though Star Trek we are told that sentient beings have rights no matter their origin or their form.

In the episode I, Borg Picard came to the moral decision that he couldn't send Hugh back to the Borg against Hugh's will because Hugh was a sentient being who had the right to make his own decisions. Hugh, and Hugh alone decided to return to the Borg to protect the crew of the Enterprise.

Why shouldn't Tuvix have the same right to make his own decisions concerning his life. Look at all the sentient beings that were afforded rights that Tuvix was denied.

1) Hugh
2) One (in the Voyager episode Drone)
3) the Nanobots in TNG
4) The Holographic Doctor
5) The individual Species 8472 that Seven teleported to the Hirogen ship. Janeway tells Seven that Seven had no right to teleport it to protect Voyager.

and yet Tuvix was forced to have a procedure done that was against his will and was certainly of no benefit to him.

 

[Anwar]

And by not doing anything, they were similarly denying Tuvok and Neelix's sentient rights and leaving them trapped in a union neither wished for or wanted. Tuvix isn't a reliable source for THEIR consent to remain fused together against their will.

There's more to this than just Tuvix and his life.

 

[Miss Chicken]

At the time that Janeway made her decision they wasn't a single doubt that Tuvix was a fully actualised being who made his objections clear. All that matter is who owned the body at the time the decision was made.

If a mother is carrying twins and her life is threatened by a deadly disease (such as cancer) she is allowed to put her life before the life of those twins. She is allowed to have treatment that will most certainly kill her babies. Because it is her body not he babies' body, there are only living in her body - they do not own it. Their right to life exists but not at the expense of their mother if her desire is for herself to live at the expense of the babies.

Tuvix's life was endangered and his body was his to do what he wanted to. It was never Tuvok's and Neelix's body, at the best they were only living within his body (and there was no real evidence that they were still conscious in any way). If Tuvok and neelix had a right to life it should never have been at the expense of the person who owned the body they lived in and who expressed his desire to keep that body alive.

 

[teya]

Did your brother-in-law steal the life energies of two other members of the family without their consent and hoard them, stating that since it was within him he could do what he wanted?

Tuvix stole nothing. He was created in a transporter from the biological material of two humanoids & a plant.

And he did everything to make sure what was taken from them against their will was not returned to them, which is the same as theft. His life didn't really belong to him as much as a freak accident took it from others and gave it to him, and then he wanted to make sure that what was taken was not restored because he didn't care about either of them.

As for Janeway being "wrong" all the time, this goes back to what I said before: Ransom gets all the sympathy for doing evil things, yet Janeway gets all-around hatred for doing things nowhere NEAR as bad as his. Make up your minds guys, you can't like one guy for being REALLY bad and yet hate another for not being squeeky clean while still being good.

I love the scolding.

I've never said Janeway was wrong all the time, nor do I absolve Ransom. So your including me in the "guys" is ridiculous.

I look at the Tuvix issue the same way the Doctor does. Just because someone is created accidentally, doesn't mean their lives are forfeit.

Were that the case, my parents could have killed me when I was the wild teenager--given that I was an "accident."

 

[teya]

You can't execute someone just because he's not as liked as someone else.

Again to use the transplant analogy: my brother-in-law is a pain in the ass. He's screwed over every member of the family at one time or another--sometimes very seriously.

Yet we still couldn't decide to make him donate a kidney to his brother, simply because we liked his brother better and wanted him to stay alive.

BTW, this is precisely why objectivity is crucial in medicine.

Okay. Suppose your brother was suffering because your brother-in-law had damaged his kidney, and was the reason WHY he needed a replacement to begin with.

Not my brother, my SO, my soulmate.

In other words, someone with whom I had a similar relationship as Kes to Neelix.

I still don't think having a forced donation is a good option, naturally, but how would that affect your approach to the situation? What if your brother was dying and your brother-in-law was the best available donor, as well as the cause of the problem? You have only a short time to make a choice, and it's the same difficult choice Janeway had. I don't know what to suggest, truthfully, and I don't think any of my choices are free of problems. I'd love for things to be simpler in this hypothetical scenario, but they aren't. No matter what I choose, somebody is going to suffer.

Nope. Doesn't change it in the slightest. You cannot force someone to risk his or her life to save another.

Besides, Tuvix was not the cause of the problem--he was the result of an accident. Nothing he did--consciously or unconsciously--was the cause of the problem.

 

[Tachyon]

Tuvix was one heck of an episode with a good moral dilemma.

There was no right way to get out of that situation, but I believe Janeway chose the "less bad" option from the two bad ones. It wasn't easy for her, as can be seen from the episode, but she made her choice because she had to.

 

[Gary7]

And by not doing anything, they were similarly denying Tuvok and Neelix's sentient rights and leaving them trapped in a union neither wished for or wanted. Tuvix isn't a reliable source for THEIR consent to remain fused together against their will.

There's more to this than just Tuvix and his life.

Agreed. Tuvix was behaving instinctual, the desires of Tuvok and Neelix to live is now boosted by being together. He couldn't be objective enough to understand what was really at stake. That what he thought of himself was really in two people... two people that needed to go on living, because the ability to do it was discovered.

 

[JustKate]

Pretend this post isn't here. I had a perfectly reasonable one posted, but then Gary changed his post above. I'll try not to take it personally.

 

[Gary7]

Arguing a side successfully means taking in all considerations, weighing them, and letting the most crucial rise to the top. When you look at only some of those considerations, it is easy to be swayed to one side or another.

Many of the analogies chosen are unfit, because they don't accurately match the situation. Like two hostages for one life. Or choosing one person over another.

The fact of the matter is that Tuvix should not exist. He was not a natural mutation or incarnation. He was a mistake, an accident, a tragedy of two lost lives. And the last element is the key... because at first the thought was that those lives were lost. But the EMH figured out how to retrieve them with a high degree of certainty.

Let's assume this variation on the scenario: Tuvix materializes. Everyone is stunned, including Tuvix. An accident has just occurred, with Tuvok and Neelix now "gone". Tuvix is in their places. It is a mistake. Belana checks for a transporter malfunction, figures it out, then says to the captain "The transporter circuitry suffered an energy surge that cross blended Tuvok and Neelix. I've got both of their patterns from the last beam-out. And I can reassemble them from this combined entity, but we'll have to act fast." Janeway would say "Do it!" And Tuvix would be dematerialized, then Tuvok and Neelix materialized. Tell me... if it happened THIS way, isn't it unlikely that we would be discussing it in this thread? A horrible error was corrected and the two original people survived.

So what's different from that scenario and the one that was depicted in "Tuvix"? The Tuvix being got to live longer. People got to know him. The time to figure out the retrieval took longer. But the situation is still essentially the same. A mistake was made that needed to be corrected. Now... if the risk was very high that the dematerialization would fail, one could well argue that it wouldn't be worth doing. However, if the odds were very high that the dematerialization would work, you'd get back two very valuable members of the crew, then... well, to me the risk is worth taking.

And what of Tuvix? He was indeed a fascinating character. A curious blend of two very different species. Yes, he was afraid to die... desperately wanted to live. An instinctual reaction to an absurd situation. He couldn't be objective to understand and appreciate the two lives that were in the balance. But I believe that things would not be all roses and sunshine for the long run, if he did continue as Tuvix. How does one settle two minds blended together? Where is his real family? Do you honestly think that once they returned to the Alpha quadrant, Tuvok's wife would embrace him? He's a mutant alien. And yet Tuvix has the knowledge and memories of Tuvok. Your wife and family reject you. How do you deal with that? Neelix didn't have any family and was a loner anyway, who does eventually find his place (among fellow Talaxians, becoming a key member for their cause for survival). You're alone in the universe, one abomination that never should have occurred. What kind of life is that? My prediction is that the Tuvix character would eventually commit suicide for being unable to resolve his identity and place in the universe. But... if you have a very good chance of averting this fate, it seems so necessary to do it.

One other thing... if we think of Tuvix as Neelix and Tuvok blended, then he doesn't really die. He is put back into his two basic elements: Tuvok and Neelix. Those elements go back to operating independently, instead of blended together.

 

[JustKate]

^ I think you may be on to something, Gary. Perhaps in an ideal world, how long Tuvix was in existance ought not make a difference, but in the minds of the Voyager crew and its captain, it almost certainly would, and it almost certainly would for viewers, too - not all, of course, and I suspect some of those are participating in this thread, but some.

For one thing, the longer he's around, the longer everybody would have to think about the consequences of killing him/correcting the error/whatever it is that you want to call it when he disappears and Tuvok and Neelix reappear. That makes it harder right there.

 

[Gary7]

Pretend this post isn't here. I had a perfectly reasonable one posted, but then Gary changed his post above. I'll try not to take it personally.

Sorry, Kate--didn't know you had just submitted a reply (we have the exact same timestamp)! I wanted to put my response to an earlier post first, then follow with my longer one. But you recovered nicely.

 

[JustKate]

I figured you were just trying to keep me on my toes.

 

[Michael]

I'm sorry for digging out this thread, but there was something I wanted to comment on. During this discussion Unicron mentioned the episode Ashes to Ashes. Since it has been years since I last saw this episode I didn't really remember much from it. However, recently I got the chance to rewatch it, which is why I can comment now.

It's the same question that came up in "Ashes to Ashes." Ballard was killed on an away mission, then revived by the Kobali because they rely on genetically altering the dead of other races to keep their race going. To them, that made Ballard a completely new individual with a completely new life; her old life was meaningless. To use the logic you're using to defend Tuvix, Janeway would have had to simply tell Ensign Ballard that the Kobali were correct and she couldn't justify letting her return to the crew of Voyager. Which by itself would have been pretty silly.

Why would her feelings be irrelevant? It is true that had Neelix or Tuvok actually been 100% dead, with no hope of restoration possible, the crew would have adapted. But that's not what happened with Tuvix. And should Janeway have rejected Ensign Ballard's attempt to rejoin Voyager in "Ashes to Ashes" on the grounds that she had technically died three years before and the Kobali considered her a separate individual in their society?

To be honest, I don't really see why you think my arguments for saving Tuvix would mean that Janeway had to tell Ensign Ballard to return to the Kobali. To make myself clear, I think Janeway was wrong with killing Tuvix, because he was a sentient being with the will to live and the right to decide about his own life. In the same vein, Ensign Ballard had the right to decide what she wanted to do; whether she wanted to remain on the Voyager or to return to the Kobali. It didn't matter if she was a 'completely new individual with a completely new life' or if she was still Ensign Ballard. The point is, she should be the one to decide about her life, not others. Not Janeway, not the Kobali.